Monthly Archives: March, 2014

After six days of silence, as if to answer those of us wondering what became of Tom McInerney, FOX News brought back the retired general last night to chat — very briefly — with prime time diva Megyn Kelly, whose mission seemed to simply let McInerney off the hook for his statements to Sean Hannity six days earlier (see previous post), indicating he had inside knowledge that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had been hijacked to Pakistan.

Last night the general would only tell Kelly that the latest Inmarsat projection that the missing jetliner crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean more than 1,000 miles off Perth “doesn’t pass the common sense test” and that “we shouldn’t let our guard down” until the plane is found.

“It is not normal for a Muslim to commit suicide and take 238 people with him,” McInerney said, apparently forgetting that it’s been quite normal for some, shall we say, “activist Muslims” to strapon homemade bombs and take as many of their enemies as possible with them to meet Allah. You might recall the Marine Corps Barracks or Khobar Towers bombings, among other highlights of U.S. Mideast involvement.

“We must err on the national security side,” the general said, “if in fact we don’t find records, then I would not let our guard down. … It’s much better for the United States and its allies if he did go there and commit suicide. … Why did he have to go down there [off Perth]? That’s what doesn’t pass the common sense test.”

The brief exchange between Kelly and McInerney seemed staged and intended only to slighly “walk back” McInterney’s incendiary statements to Hannity of March 20. We still know nothing more than that the plane is still missing, no debris has been identified and the technical gibberish being offered to justify the conclusion that the plane went in the drink stinks of disinformation. Something is certainly rotten in Kuala Lumpur.

The quest for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is beginning to look more and more like the unending search for Amelia Earhart’s Electra on Nikumaroro on steroids — a complete charade meant only to distract and misinform the public, and provide more fodder for the Discovery News Earhart disinformation program.

In the case of the missing Malaysian jetliner, the entire international community is the target audience, which raises questions about our politicized media that have long needed asking. Outraged relatives of the missing passengers — two-thirds of whom are Chinese,demonstrated loudly outside the Malaysia embassy in Beijing yesterday, demanding more information from Malaysian authorities, who have been notoriously unforthcoming and incompetent in their investigation of the missing plane.

Gen. Tom McInerney has not been seen on FOX News since he told Sean Hannity that he thinks Malaysia Air Flight 370 was hijacked to Pakistan.

In what is becoming eeerily reminiscent of the false claims coming from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) during their seemingly endless 26-year Earhart search, today Reuters reports that “new satellite images have revealed more than 100 objects in the southernIndian Ocean that could be debris from a Malaysian jetliner missing for 18 days with 239 people on board, Malaysia’s acting transport minister said on Wednesday. The latest sighting came as searchers stepped up efforts to find some trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, thought to have crashed on March 8 after flying thousands of miles off course.”

Similar false reports have been the mainstream media template for at least a week. The claim that some sort of debris that could be from the missing Boeing 777 has been spotted by satellites is all we hear from our esteemed media pundits. It’s as if the word has gone out — from who or what is the question — that this is the story and you’d better stick to it.

Nothing more has been heard from FOX News analyst, retired Gen. Tom McInerney, who told Sean Hannity on March 20 that sources about whom he couldn’t “say anything” have told him that the jetliner “may have landed in Pakistan. And I believe that airplane landed,” McInerney told Hannity on his primetime Fox show. “I believe that airplane landed. And I’ve listened to a lot of aviation experts, and none of them know anything about radical Islam. … Yeah, I still maintain it was hijacked. And for anyone to say, Well, they had a fire or something — look, we never heard a mayday.

“All the communications,” the general continued, “the coms, the UHF/VHF satcom, to our knowledge were never turned off. And so they could have talked, if they wanted. … It surprised me, too. And what have we heard from our own intelligence agencies about certain airfields, particularly the one near Quetta, Pakistan. As I mentioned the other day on the radio, the distance from Lahore to Beijing, excuse me, Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and Kuala Lumpur to Lahore, Pakistan, is 2,700 miles, equidistant. Isn’t that a coincidence?”

Since McInterney’s comments to Hannity, ZERO about the hijacking possibility has been seen or heard from any news agency that I’m aware of right now. It’s as if McInerney’s appearance was a unplanned mistake that will not be repeated on major air anytime soon. Those who say that we would have heard from hijackers by now, claiming credit or making demands, aren’t considering that the barbarians who dominate the third-world ‘stans understand very well how the element of surprise can be their ace in the hole in future terror attacks.

Only Tammy Bruce talked about it on her show two nights ago, though of course it’s possible other minor radio hosts may have done so as well. But major networks seem frantic to tell us that the plane went in the Indian Ocean thousands of miles off Western Australia, the last place anyone would expect it to be. Call me paranoid or conspiratorial, but if 26 years of study in the Earhart disappearance has taught me anything, it’s that the media can’t be trusted. And the more important the story, the less truth we get from the media.

I think it’s not too early to ask if the reporting about the disappearance of Flight 370 is going to loosely parallel the false Coast Guard and Navy conclusions when Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan went missing in 1937. The truth about Earhart and Noonan, who landed at Mili Atoll, were picked up by the Japanese and taken to Saipan, where they died miserable deaths, has yet to be officially admitted by the U.S. government. The Earhart cover-up, chronicled in detail in Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last, was not the last sacred cow our establishment elites created and nurture to protect their corrupt interests and rear ends, both political and financial. Could Flight 370 be the next one, for even more despicable reasons on the part of our establishment elites?

Something to consider as you watch the latest dispatches about the new garbage spotted by satellites.

As we enter the 14th day in the thus far futile search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, hope is beginning to fade as the media circus cranks into full overdrive, and incoherent TV news people and their legions of experts offer up any number of wild theories as to what could have taken the Boeing 777-200ER out of the earthy plane of existence and into the Twilight Zone.

A CNN host actually suggested that a black hole might have been responsible for the missing airliner, asking panelists if it was really so “preposterous” to consider a black hole as a possibility? But a former Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Transportation, Mary Schiavo, brought the group back to earth when she said, “A small black hole would suck in our entire universe, so we know it’s not that.”

As of this writing, bad weather near in Perth, Australia, early Friday is making the search for possible pieces of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the southern Indian Ocean more complicated. A freighter used searchlights early Friday to scan rough seas in one of the remotest places on Earth after satellite images detected the debris.

Officials called this the “best lead” of thenearly two-week-old aviation mystery, when a satellite detected two objects floating about 1,000 miles off the coast of Australia and halfway to the desolate islands of the Antarctic. The development raised new hope of finding the vanished jet and sent another emotional jolt to the families of the 239 people aboard.

CBS reported that the “objects spotted on the satellite images were at the extreme southern end of the projected southern search corridor, so in an area where all earlier information suggested crews might expect to find the missing jet. The largest object could be one of the Boeing 777’s wings.” They won’t find it there, or anywhere else in the water, is this observer’s guess.

Amelia’s flight from Lae, New Guinea to Howland Island totalled 2,556 statute miles and had never been done before.

Others say that if the airliner has been hijacked to Pakistan or some other third-world backwater where news coverage is nonexistent and the locals are happy simply to be fed by their masters, our government woudn’t announce it to the public, although media insiders might be let in on the secret. That way, negotiations could proceed and the lives of the 239 aboard might be saved, and blah, blah, blah.

What really gets me are the many pundits who insist on comparing the Malaysia Flight 370 mystery with the last flight of Amelia Earhart, as if these two events actually share real commonalities. It makes no difference that these smug luminaries know nothing of the Earhart disappearance, and actually believe that the so-called Earhart “mystery” is real, when it’s in fact a government-media illusion in its 77th year of popularity.

I won’t get into all the details and differences, but let’s look at just a few. In July 1937, Amelia and her world-class navigator, Fred Noonan, took off from Lae, New Guinea, in their twin-engine Lockheed Electra 10E at 10 a.m. local time, their destination Howland Island, a barren speck, about two miles long and a half-mile wide, just north of the equator in the central Pacific, about 1,900 miles southwest of Honolulu and 200 miles east of the International Dateline. The flight had never been accomplished or even attempted before, but Noonan was confident he could navigate them to Howland safely, where a makeshift landing strip had been cleared amid the many thousands of resident gooney birds.

Please, let’s not compare the primitive Electra 10E with the Boeing 777, and the well-worn flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing to the perilious Lae to Howland stretch over empty ocean. Our heroes had good radio equipment, for the day, but had left their most powerful transmitting device, their 500-kilohertz trailing antenna, behind in Miami for no discernable reason. Many think this mistake was their fatal one. If you want a description of the incredible high-tech communications capabilities of Flight 370, please look elsewhere.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370’s scheduled flight path.

The last words that Malaysian air traffic controllers heard, at 1:19 a.m., were those of the co-pilot saying “All right, good night,” as if all were well. Amelia’s last message to the Coast Guard Cutter Itasca, at 8:44 a.m. Howland time, was one of the few the cutter received from her during the final few hours of her ostensible approach to Howland. Amelia’s final message was notable for its shrill tone, some calling it “panicked,” others recalling it as “high pitched” and describing her as sounding very worried.

Twenty hours and 14 minutes afterdeparting Lae, Amelia transmited her infamous last message: “WE ARE ON THE LINE 157-337,WILL REPEAT THIS MESSAGE, WILL REPEAT THIS MESSAGE ON 6210 KCS. WAIT LISTENING ON 6210 KCS. WE ARE RUNNING NORTH AND SOUTH.” The message was received on 3105 at signal strength 5. “She was so loud that I ran up tothe bridge expecting to see her coming in for a landing,” Itasca Chief Radioman Leo Bellarts told researcher Elgen Long in 1973. But Amelia wasn’t there, she was on her way to Mili Atoll, as those who are familiar with the facts well know.

The Earhart matter has been covered up and the truth suppressed since FDR learned that the Japanese had her on Saipan, possibly even before she arrived there, sometime in the late summer or early fall of 1937, at the latest. How is this comparable to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370? But when the media says these two events, separated by nearly 77 years, are similar, they must be.

The biggest media “tell” of all came last Friday, when Megan Kelly of FOX News invited TIGHAR’s Ric Gillespie to join her panel of “aviation experts” to discuss what might have happened to Flight 370. Here FOX exposed itself as just another in the long line of mainstream organizations who shill for the establishment’s false narrative in the so-called Earhart mystery. How can FOX News – or anyone else, for that matter, consider Gillespie, who has made 10 failed trips to Nikumaroro (Gardner Island) and failed to find a single item that could be connected to Earhart or Noonan, an expert on how to find a lost jetliner? Please, tell me.

Yet there sat the TIGHAR chief, ensconced comfortably among the real experts, and Kelly actually asked him a question. He mumbled something about Amelia Earhart, and Kelly looked quite intrigued. That’s what I was told, anyway. Welcome to today’s “news,” where perception is reality, and the truth is an orphan.

The few Earhart enthusiasts who regularly read this blog are aware that the second of the two major storylines that describe Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last, the near-total media blackout of the book, has greatly overshadowed its most important aspect – its presentation of the most comprehensive and compelling case ever for the presence and deaths of Amelia and Fred Noonan on Saipan. I won’t name the various radio hosts, newspaper people and bloggers who’ve pledged to help, only to slink away and ignore me after they learn the unpleasant facts about the wretched ends of our two heroes almost 77 years ago. They’re even worse than the masses who never reply at all.

The ugly truth in the Earhart case simply doesn’t fit into the rose-colored worldview of the vast majority of our media types, even the few known as “honest conservatives,” or those who’ve gained similar accolades from their slavish fans. It’s not PC and “it’s not artistic,” as Rosie Perez told Billy Hoyle, Woody Harrelson’s character in White Men Can’t Jump, as they argued about winning versus losing on a bus ride in South Central Los Angeles. If that weren’t enough, the truth remains a sacred cow, off-limits in polite society and verboten in the media. On top of all this, it’s just not important anymore, what happened to a pair of Americans who landed in the wrong place thePacific in 1937 and paid for it with their lives. Most under 50 have never heard of Amelia Earhart. No wonder I had no competition when I took on this story in 1988, and Thomas E. Devine only shook his head when I asked him why no big time reporters had ever called him or knocked on his door.

Now, of course, we have the continuing cover-up and mystification of the Earhart disappearance — her loss still officially considered as among the 20th century’s greatest puzzles; its irresolvable nature long ago became an accepted piece of our cultural furniture that none but a scant few even questions anymore. And don’t forget, the wonderful Japanese people have been our best allies in the region since 1945, and we don’t want to re-open old wounds or embarrass our friends, do we?

At the risk of being accused of extreme redundancy and even sour grapes, I must say it again: The establishment’s aversion to the truth in the Earhart case is very real, and it has been trending even worse than normal until only recently, when a distant point of light emerged from the most unexpected place I could have imagined.

The second-most famous American female pilot of the golden age of aviation, Louise McPhetridge Thaden became the first woman to win major flying events and awards as well as setting world performance records. A colleague of Amelia Earhart, Thaden co-founded the Ninety-Nines in 1930, an international organization for female pilots which continues to the present day.

In mid-December, Larry Knorr, Sunbury Press publisher, advised me that he had received a phone call from Kay Alley, vice chair of the Kansas Chapter of the Ninety- Nines, the international organization of licensed women pilots, with over 5,500 members from 35 countries. Ms. Alley asked Larry if she thought I might be interested in speaking at the Ninety-Nines South Central Section Fall Meeting, to be held in Wichita, Kansas, the last weekend of September, 2014. Is the Pope a Catholic? I’ve talked to Kay a few times already, thanked her profusely for this golden opportunity, and after a few meetings with her planning committee, she has assured me that it will happen. Kay also says that two other aviation groups that are having conferences at the same time in Wichita have expressed their interest in having me speak to them, so this could be even bigger than we initially envisioned. “Surprised” doesn’t begin to describe my reaction to this completely unforeseen development.

Here’s more about the remarkable organization that is the Ninety- Nines, who elected Amelia Earhart as their first president, taken directly from the Kansas Chapter’s website:

The organization came into being November 2, 1929, at Curtiss Field, Valley Stream, Long Island, New York. All 117 American female pilots had been invited to assemble for mutual support and the advancement of aviation. Louise Thaden was elected secretary and worked tirelessly to keep the group together as we struggled to organize and grow until 1931, when Amelia Earhart was elected as first president and the group was named for the 99 charter members.

Today Ninety-Nines are professional pilots for airlines, industry and government; we are pilots who teach and pilots who fly for pleasure; we are pilots who are technicians and mechanics. But first and foremost, we are women who love to fly!

Our Headquarters, located at the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is home to our large archival records, video oral histories, personal artifacts, collections and memorabilia, and biographical files on thousands of women pilots from around the world. This is also the site of our 99s Museum of Women Pilots.

Kay Alley, Vice Chair of the Kansas Chapter of the Ninety-Nines.

To say this elite group of women pilots is pure “establishment” would be an abject understatement. The Ninety-Nines are universally respected as the ultimate group of professional female aviators – “aviatrixes” in the old parlance. For them to recognize the existence of Truth at Last at all is more than any establishment organization, outside of a few chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, a Kiwanis group and some senior assisted living facilities in Jacksonville have done so far. But the Ninety-Nines carry serious weight, and others who have previously looked askance at this book may reconsider after the September event. This presupposes that my presentation will be good, and so I’ll do all I can to be as ready and professional as I can. I’ve already begun to assemble a comprehensive power point presentation that will tell the Truth at Last story in 90 minutes, and there’s plenty of time to polish it.

Finally we’re going to get a real break, an opportunity to make friends and influence people, all because just one woman likes my book, recognizes the truth and is placed where she can make a difference. That’s all it takes, so basically, I suppose the lesson here is that it’s all in God’s hands. Perhaps the most amazing irony of all –it’s almost impossible for me to label this a coincidence – is that the Kansas Chapter of the Ninety Nines is, of course, the chapter of Amelia’s state of birth.

A few others who want to help this cause are also beginning to emerge. David C. Henley, the publisher emeritus of the Lahontan Valley (Nevada) News, has promised to do a story for the Carson City newspaper, the Nevada Appeal, after he takes some photos of the old Garapan jail on Saipan during a forthcoming visit to the scene of the crime, and I’ll be on Truth Frequency Radiothis Sunday, March 9 at 5 p.m., EDT. A few other things are in the works, but it’s too early to announce anything.

So please stay tuned. As I’ve told Larry Knorr several times, “This book has not yet begun to fight!” Nor have I.

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The Second Edition of “Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last,” is a large 7″ by 10″ paperback offering 370 pages at the same low retail price of $19.95, and significantly less at Amazon.com. The book adds two chapters, a new foreword, several new subsections, the most recent discoveries, rare photos and a near-total rewrite to the mountain of overwhelming witness testimony and documentation presented in the first edition of “Truth at Last. ”

Even as a child, Amelia had the look of someone destined for greatness. In this photo, she seems to be gazing at events far away in time and space. Who can fathom it?

This is a priceless portrait of our heroine at the tender age of 7. She seems to be peering into timelessness, as if she can actually see the amazing adventures that are in store for her — and us. Who can fathom it?

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Amelia at Spadina Military Hospital, Toronto, Canada, circa 1917-’18

While visiting Muriel at St. Margaret’s College in Toronto in 1917, Amelia encountered three Canadian soldiers who had lost a leg, and decided, on the spot, to join the war effort. She enrolled in the Voluntary Aid Detachment and was assigned to the Spadina Military Hospital. “Sister Amelia soon became a favorite among the wounded and discouraged men,” Muriel wrote.

Arrival at Londonderry, Ireland, May 21, 1932

Earhart had spent the last 15 hours tossed by dangerous storms over the North Atlantic, contending with failing machinery and sipping a can of tomato juice to calm her queasy stomach. That day—May 21, 1932—she planned to end her journey at Paris’ Le Bourget airfield, where exactly five years earlier Charles Lindbergh had completed the first solo transatlantic flight. When her Vega’s reserve fuel tank sprang a leak and flames began engulfing the exhaust manifold, however, Earhart wound up navigating to a Northern Ireland pasture. From that moment , Amelia Earhart’s star shined brightest, and her like has never been seen since.

Acclaim at Londonderry

Another great photo of Amelia, as she prepares to take off from Derry, Northren Ireland, and fly on to London, where worldwide fame awaited. After a flight lasting 14 hours, 56 minutes during which she contended with strong northerly winds, icy conditions and mechanical problems, Earhart landed in a pasture at Culmore, north of Derry, Northern Ireland. The landing was witnessed by Cecil King and T. Sawyer. When a farm hand asked, “Have you flown far?” Earhart replied, “From America.” The site now is the home of a small museum, the Amelia Earhart Centre.

Summer 1960: The Saipan Truth comes out

The headline story of the May 27, 1960 edition of the San Mateo Times was the first of several stories written by ace reporter Linwood Day that set the stage for Fred Goerner’s first visit to Saipan in mid-June 1960 and led Goerner’s 1966 bestseller, “The Search for Amelia Earhart.” Day worked closely by phone with Goerner, and on July 1, 1960, the Earhart frenzy reached its peak, with the Times announcing “Amelia Earhart Mystery Is Solved” in a 100-point banner headline accross its front page.

This story appeared in the San Mateo Times “Family Weekly” news magazine on July 3, 1960. The sensational account revealed details of her life as an 11-year-old on 1937 Saipan, but the true picture of what she actually saw that day remains in question. Was it a seaplane or a landplane in trouble that landed at Tanapag Harbor?

Fred Goerner with witness Manual Aldan, Saipan, 1960

Fred Goerner with witness Manuel Aldan on Saipan, June 1960. Aldan was a dentist whose practice was restricted to Japanese officers in 1937, and though he didn’t see the American fliers, he heard much about them from his patients. Aldan told Goerner that one officer identified the white woman as “Earharto!” (Courtesy San Francisco Library Special Collections.)

The only bestseller ever penned on the Earhart disappearance, “Search” sold over 400,000 copies and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for six months. In September 1966, Time magazine’s scathing review, titled “Sinister Conspiracy,” set the original tone for what has become several generations of media aversion to the truth about Amelia’s death on Saipan.

This story, which announced Thomas E. Devine’s Saipan gravesite claim, appeared in the San Mateo Times on July 16, 1960. Devine returned to Saipan in 1963 and located the gravesite shown to him by the Okinawan woman in August 1945, but did not share his find with Fred Goerner. Instead Devine planned to return to Saipan by himself, but he never again got the opportunity.

Thomas E. Devine, whose involvement with events surrounding the discovery and destruction of Amelia Earhart’s Electra 10E as a 28-year-old Army postal sergeant on Saipan in July 1944 shaped the rest of his life. Devine’s 1987 classic, “Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident,” is among the most important books about the Earhart disappearance ever penned.

Thomas E. Devine’s “Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident” (1987) is Devine’s first-person account of his eyewitness experiences on Saipan, where he saw Amelia Earhart’s Electra 10, NR 16020 on three occasions, the final time the plane was in flames. Devine’s book is among the most important ever penned in revealing the truth about the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

On November 13, 1970, the Japan Times reported, for the first time, the shocking claims of Mrs. Michiko Sugita, who was told of Amelia Earhart’s execution on Saipan in 1937. Sugita, the eleven-year-old daughter of the civilian chief of police on Saipan in 1937, told the Japan Times in 1970 that Japanese military police shot Amelia Earhart as a spy there. Sugita, the first Japanese national to report Earhart’s presence on Saipan, corresponded for a time with Thomas E. Devine, but later went missing and his letters were returned, marked, “No such person, unknown.”

Mrs. Michiko Sugita, Japanese national, Earhart witness

Mrs. Michiko Sugita, whose account as told to the Japan Times in 1970 remains the only testimony from a Japanese national that attests to Amelia Earhart’s presence and death on Saipan following her July 2, 1937 disappearance. Sugitia corresponded with Thomas E. Devine for a few years in the mid-1970s before Devine’s letters were returned with the notation, “No such person. Return to sender.”

This story appeared at the top of page 1 in the July 13, 1937 edition of the Bethlehem (Pennsylvania)-Globe Times. “Vague and unconfirmed rumors that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan have been rescued by a Japanese fishing boat without a radio,” the report began, “and therefore unable to make any report, found no verification here today, but plunged Tokio [sic] into a fever of excitement.” The story was quickly squelched in Japan, and no follow-up was done. (Courtesy Woody Peard.)

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz: Fred Goerner’s most respected informant

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, circa 1942, the last of the Navy’s 5-star admirals. In late March 1965, a week before his meeting with General Wallace M. Greene Jr. at Marine Corps Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, Nimitz called Goerner in San Francisco. “Now that you’re going to Washington, Fred, I want to tell you Earhart and her navigator did go down in the Marshalls and were picked up by the Japanese,” Goerner claimed Nimitz told him. The admiral’s revelation appeared to be a monumental breakthrough for the determined newsman, and is known even to many casual observers of the Earhart matter. “After five years of effort, the former commander of U.S. Naval Forces in the Pacific was telling me it had not been wasted,” Goerner wrote.

Marshall Islands 50th Anniversary Commemorative Stamps, 1987

The independent Republic of the Marshalls Islands issued these four postage stamps to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s landing at Mili Atoll and pickup by the Japanese survey ship Koshu in July 1937. To the Marshallese people, the Earhart disappearance is no mystery or rumor, but a stone cold fact.